An ousted friend seeks answers on the road

Much like J.K. Rowling and George R.R. Martin, best-selling author Haruki Murakami is the type of writer whose fans queue up at bookstores at midnight, clamoring to be the first to get their hands on his latest book. Unfortunately, people who do not read Japanese have had to wait quite some time to read Murakami’s latest, Colorless Tsukuru Tazaki and His Years of Pilgrimage, which was published to acclaim in Japan in April 2013.

A love haunted by African revolution

Dinaw Mengestu’s third novel skillfully blends two disparate narratives—the account of an African revolution and the story of a survivor’s new life in America—to create a moving portrait of the dilemma of identity.

The splintering of a family, and a country

Moses Ebewesit Odidi Oganda is killed in the prologue of Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor’s first novel, Dust. From there on, everything falls to pieces.

We’re in 2007 Kenya, though the country has been tormented ever since the Brits decided to graft it onto their Empire. Add to this the Mau Mau uprisings, myriad political assassinations and the mandatory forgetting of the disappearances and torture of thousands of men, women and children. As one of the characters contemplates in this grief-stricken book, the three languages spoken in Kenya are “English, Kiswahili and Silence.”

Life and death surround a young Haitian girl

A portrait of Haiti derived from facts alone would be grim. It is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, suffers from catastrophic deforestation and is frequently visited by the United States military. In 2010, an earthquake added insult to perennial injury.Edwidge Danticat’s new novel, Claire of the Sea Light, offers a somewhat different picture. Deforestation rates a mention....

An intriguing international story

A celebrity in his native Spain, Javier Marías is puzzlingly unknown in the U.S. His novels are considered modern classics. He’s often tipped for the Nobel Prize. And his works have been translated into 42 languages in 52 countries. His latest prize-winning bestseller, The Infatuations, comes to America this month, and those who like their lit cerebral would do well to see what the fuss...

The lasting connection of a homeland

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s new novel, Americanah, begins in a train station in Princeton, New Jersey, where Ifemelu is on her way to Trenton to get her hair braided. This errand, seemingly simple, could stand as a microcosm for a plot that is all about transitions—epic, life-altering journeys from Nigeria to America and London, the transition from high school to college, the evolution of teenage crushes to true love, right down to the minute, but no less significant, detail of where a black girl can get her hair done.

The battle for modern India rages on

Aravind Adiga emerged as a powerful new voice in literature with his debut The White Tiger, a tale of the terrible lengths to which one poor Indian man will go to rise above his station, which went on to win the Man Booker Prize. Adiga’s third novel, Last Man in Tower, delves into the streets of Mumbai to reveal the city through the eyes of the middle class.It focuses on a battle between...

A wise work from Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel’s new work, The Sonderberg Case, is a terse philosophical novel that explores issues of identity, memory and personal responsibility in the shadow of the Holocaust, subjects to which the Nobel Prize-winning author has returned time and again in his distinguished literary career.Yedidyah Wasserman, Wiesel’s protagonist, is a failed actor and theater critic for one of New...

A Chinese author’s timeless love affair with language

Some people just really love words. Dai Sijie, author of Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress, is one of those people. His new novel, Once on a Moonless Night, revels in language—or more accurately, languages. The plot hinges on an ancient silk manuscript written in a mysterious tongue, torn in half by the teeth of the last Chinese emperor, Puyi, in a fit of rage, and destined to be a...

Reclaiming the family heritage

In The Assassin's Song, M.G. Vassanji has created a stunning portrait of a man struggling with the burdens and the joys of filial and religious obligation. It is the mid-1960s in northern India, and Karsan Dargawalla is destined to succeed his father as the avatar of Pirbaag, the shrine of a 13th-century Sufi mystic. Hoping for a regular life unencumbered by spiritual demands, Karsan secretly...